Electronic messaging applications, such as email, convey various types of information to a recipient such as messages to and from various others. Some messages include a task that the recipient must perform. However, to identify a task in a message, it is necessary to perform several actions. First, the message is reviewed and, if there is a task somewhere in the message, the task is identified and characterized. Next, in order to ensure that the task is not simply forgotten, it is best to annotate the message in some way to indicate that there is a task in the message. For instance, to add a task reminder to the message that includes the task. What are needed in the art are systems and methods for assisting a recipient with identifying such tasks and annotating messages accordingly.